Other than the Miis that populate the game, the only character to speak of in Wii Party is a muppety, pink-tuxedoed ringmaster whose primary purpose is to get you up to speed on certain mechanics and to point you to the minigames you'll have the most fun with. Wii Party assumes that you're here to party, so the very first time--and every time--you boot the game up, you're immediately presented with a simple menu giving you a few different ways to approach the 70-plus minigames contained within.
Top row, you've got five different board games to choose from, each of which helpfully lists the average runtime of a full game, ranging from 15 minutes to about an hour. Longtime Mario Party players should be familiar with the infuriating odds-evening that can happen within this format, to the point that your performance in the actual minigames can be inconsequential. Wii Party has a few built-in mechanisms for introducing some random chance and keeping games from being complete washouts, but it does so with a certain restraint. It also doesn't hurt that the board game mechanics themselves are appreciably different from one to the next, going from a dice-powered trip up a perilous mountain to a Mii-themed game of bingo.
With a few exceptions, you can access just about everything Wii Party has to offer right from the get-go. If you don't need the board-game framing devices, you can go straight to a list of minigames, or if you'd rather not poke around the list, you can hit the "suggestions" button on the main menu, dial in the number of players and the amount of time you've got, and go from there.
I think it speaks volumes to just how low the level of quality in most Wii party games has become that all it took was Nintendo putting together a competent, though still largely familiar package, to put everyone else to shame. This is still a very straightforward collection of minigames, though with the right casual group of players, it can be a fun time indeed.
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